Nevertheless, 'dharma' is both 'duty' and also 'law'. In other words, it's not simply an individual prerogative or obligation, but is inherent in the natural order (the original root being 'what upholds' or 'holds together'). — Wayfarer

Why is it "duty and also law"? I would say it is because we conceive it as such or because it is simply the way things work best. If animals instinctively follow "the way" then that would explain why they are so much less fucked up than we are. I can accept the idea that to go against what is naturally the best way for us would be a negative. Perish the thought that we might ever do that! :wink:

How do we find out what is the best way for us? Perhaps introspection, self-awareness and self-knowledge, that is what we call "the examined life", might help. When it comes to the best way to treat the environment and other animals, I would say science and compassion might come in handy. Of course, the best way for us and the best way for the other animals and the living environment arguably cannot be two different ways.

The other point I would make is that dharma and Dao are earthly law—we know little about the rest of the cosmos. We might assume that other galaxies and the far corners of the cosmos have the same or similar ways as we do. It would seem that only once life arrives can there be not merely a way, but a best way. And what makes that way best? Well, of course animal and human (and perhaps plant) flourishing, what else?

If you'd read the OP, you could not have failed to observe that this, your sense of purpose here, is not the topic, and so without relevance. — tim wood

If you'd have read what you said to me, you would know that you asked me "in terms of purpose - of any kind -". I assume that the clearly stated "any kind", implies that any such restrictions are to be put aside.

Anyway, I just reread your op, and cannot understand your proposed restrictions at all. Can you explain clearly how you are proposing to restrict the meaning of "purpose" in this thread?

And in passing since you claimed earlier that there could be no propose before purpose, I assume you also would hold that there can be no hearts until there was a heart. — tim wood

What are you talking about? Of course there can be no hearts until there is a heart. That's a self-evident truth. But that's not at all relevant to what I said. I said purpose is prior to a display of purpose. A heart is a display of purpose, so purpose (or intent if you prefer) must be prior to the heart. How do you get from this to the self-evident truth of "there can be no hearts until there was a heart"?

But let's try these: is God constrained in any way? Is He real? My point being that in belief in an idea, you can have what you want. But not in any reality. — tim wood

How is this relevant? In reality, sometimes you get what you want, sometimes you do not. In what way do you believe that the constraints placed on human beings are related to the constraints placed on God, if there are any?

I don't know. :chin:

The questions here are, then, what is purpose (in itself), where does it come from, what is its ground? — tim wood

I think "purpose (in itself)" corresponds to Spinoza's conatus: everything necessarily persists in its being.

"It comes from" nature naturing.

"Its ground" is reality.

Or, what exactly gives it all meaning, makes it all worthwhile?

Being (or life) is the (or an) end-in-itself like song dance music (i.e. rhythm/melody for rhythm's/melody's sake).

"Meaning" is ... māyā ... perspectival, semantic, ephemeral (or as Camus might say 'nostalgia').

I think (nurtured) self-worth, or dignity, "makes it all worthwhile."

The assumption is that if there are various particulars of some kind then there must be some one thing that underlies them all by virtue of which they are the things they are. If there are purposes then there must be some more basic and general thing, PURPOSE, without which there could be no purposes.

This is reductive reification. It posits an entity where none is to be found and thus invents a transcendent realm of eternal beings where it is to be discovered.

About ol’ Sydney’s last act: where/how does he fit into your notions of purpose with it? — Mww

On a good day, if I do something, it is for a reason. If my effort is successful, it might be said I had achieved my purpose in doing it. In this sense purpose like a work order or chore or task, a thing to be done. So I may need to do my laundry and in accordance, set about getting my wife to do it. And to be sure, most of this done without any great reflection on my part.

If I do think about it, I recognize I have a standing purpose of never being in a position of not having clean clothes. Call it rule. And as a rule, interesting because like an officer in the military, it doesn't do anything itself, but gets others to do the doing. Or if not a rule, a principle. "Standing" implies already being in existence, but it doesn't have to be. Principles/rules/purpose can be adopted on the spot, effective immediately, and as "standing" available whenever needed.

Sydney, then, had chosen as a purpose that he should do a "far better thing...". And acted in accordance with that purpose. You and I might not have done as he did. But in terms of the story he would seem to have elevated and redeemed himself by action under a principle - with purpose, instead of perhaps if he had just lost a bet.

We have duties and obligations, responsibilities and debts - all different, each resulting from a set of circumstances that are partly given (of the environment and a condition of survival) — Vera Mont

Agreed.

and partly undertaken by the subject for his or her own reasons. — Vera Mont

And to me, this the interesting part. In the first, one is driven, but in the second is one also the driver? That is, choosing for oneself how, when, why, and by what to be driven? And some of these no doubt rules and principles, but these seem passive/reactive, whereas purpose seems more active. And these also seeming to have a permanent or at least enduring quality, in that they don't apply particularly, but are instead general and give rise to particular self-direction.

But let's try these: is God constrained in any way? Is He real? My point being that in belief in an idea, you can have what you want. But not in any reality.
— tim wood

How is this relevant? In reality, sometimes you get what you want, sometimes you do not. In what way do you believe that the constraints placed on human beings are related to the constraints placed on God, if there are any? — Metaphysician Undercover

Because you brought it up, and now refuse to answer simple questions. I'll try one more time: is God constrained in any way? Is He real? My point being that in belief in an idea, you can have what you want. But not in any reality.

I think "purpose (in itself)" corresponds to Spinoza's conatus: everything necessarily persists in its being.
"It comes from" nature naturing.
"Its ground" is reality. — 180 Proof

Given, to be sure. But isn't there some aspect of yourself not merely given, but chosen and self-legislated? Maybe this way, that rules and principles are adopted by us - for our purpose here those by reason - and being themselves more magisterial than instrumental, arouse purpose which orders and directs action?

Cavil alert: maybe should be, "everything that (apparently) persists in its being necessarily persists in its being"? Or did Spinoza cover and account for that?

This is reductive reification. — Fooloso4

I understand the criticism. My effort here is not any sort of creation, but rather a looking to see what is there - on the working assumption that there is something there to see. The structure of the inquiry being, is-it, what-is-it, what-kind-of-a-thing-is-it, genus/species, quiddities; and the tools being the simple "why" and "what."

Thus if you always play the king's gambit, and I always chose vanilla, we can ask if in any way these are related, the "always" being the clue. And if related, presumably in some way by the "always," then there is a subject that might be pursued without any reification risked.

In the first, one is driven, but in the second is one also the driver? — tim wood

The underlying necessity is the same: to keep living. The layer on top of that is: to live well. The first one is much the same for every being; the second diverges. The particular requirements for a good life differ from species to species; the desires we hope will improve our life* varies by individual.
So, there are root, long term, permanent aims that require small daily action to keep going, each one of which is proposed, planned and executed with purpose.

*For some, that means accumulating goods or reputation points or power. For some, it means being loved and valued and needed. For some, it means doing good to others of his kind, or other species, or the world. For some, it means fighting for a cause. For some, it means being part of something greater than themselves. Each of those central goals requires a different series of small, purposeful actions to achieve. We may not think of these desires, intentions and acts as a coherent whole, but that's what every life adds up to.

...on the working assumption that there is something there to see. — tim wood

I am questioning that assumption. The problem is that when working with that assumption leads one to find what may not be there to find. And if not here then there.

Thus if you always play the king's gambit, and I always chose vanilla, we can ask if in any way these are related, the "always" being the clue. And if related, presumably in some way by the "always," then there is a subject that might be pursued without any reification risked. — tim wood

Why should what I always do and what you always do be related in any way other than this being what we always do? My reasons for always playing the king's gambit may have nothing to do with why you always choose vanilla. Would you ask if what I sometimes do is related to what you sometimes do?

The underlying necessity is the same: to keep living. The layer on top of that is: to live well. The first one is much the same for every being; the second diverges. The particular requirements for a good life differ from species to species; the desires we hope will improve our life* varies by individual.
So, there are root, long term, permanent aims that require small daily action to keep going, each one of which is proposed, planned and executed with purpose — Vera Mont

I think we need to make a distinction between ‘just living’ and perpetuating a particular way of living. Organisms don’t just live, they continually enact a specific normative pattern of interaction with an environment. It is this normative pattern that survives or perishes, not simply being alive as an abstract concept. If an organism is no longer able to maintain the dynamic consistency of its patterned exchanges with its niche, it is no longer that organism. To keep living as a body doesn’t capture what is relevant to the specific aims of a living system. It is these aims which are synonymous with what it means for it to continue to be what it is over time.

Applying this perspective to the normative psychological aims of humans, the motives that drive us aren’t the short term means to a long term end of merely staying alive as a body, these short term ‘in order to’s’ define the normative nature of the person as a psychological system. We live for the sake of our norms , not for the sake of an abstract notion of life.

The underlying necessity is the same: to keep living. The layer on top of that is: to live well. — Vera Mont

You seem to have covered this comprehensively. I'll add a top layer, to live ethically and morally - I think the two words mean the same thing, but both in case someone thinks they mean different things. A distinction that while the "lower" levels might be described as transactional, this top layer is not.

An example: charitable giving is imo a good thing, and certainly a sign of living well. One has the means to give, and enters the community of persons that do give. It arises to the next level by being anonymous giving.

Of course the charge against this is that it is still transactional, in that one is satisfied with and rewarded by oneself. And if true then true. But selfless giving is possible, and that is imo one expression of moral/ethical living above living well. This not against living well, because living well is a good in itself, but still the possibility for a higher good..

My reasons for always playing the king's gambit may have nothing to do with why you always choose vanilla. Would you ask if what I sometimes do is related to what you sometimes do? — Fooloso4

It's not the gambit or the vanilla, it's the always. And that's not reified in the finding; it's already there. And being there, subject to account. Whether the account itself interesting or worth the trouble a separate question.

I think we need to make a distinction between ‘just living’ and perpetuating a particular way of living. — Joshs

I attempted to. That's why I didn't say 'just live'; I said 'keep living'. In order to choose any goals or aims, one must be vital enough to choose. One must perform the basic actions entailed in survival; these are the minimum requirement.

Organisms don’t just live, they continually enact a specific normative pattern of interaction with an environment. It is this normative pattern that survives or perishes, not simply being alive as an abstract concept. — Joshs

I thought it was the organism that survives that survives and inevitably perishes. Obviously, both of those events take place in a an environment. Nothing abstract about that.

To keep living as a body doesn’t capture what is relevant to the specific aims of a living system. It is these aims which are synonymous with what it means for it to continue to be what it is over time. — Joshs

That sounds to me like a hyperbolic description of a simple matter: be born, live, eat, eliminate, rest, want things, procreate (or not) die. There is no meaning to being what it is over time: it already is and has no choice about what it is.

We live for the sake of our norms , not for the sake of an abstract notion of life. — Joshs

We tend to cling tenaciously to the very concrete fact of being alive. But beyond that, or overlayed on that, are all the short-terms goals of making our lives good, each according to his or her notion of good.

I'll add a top layer, to live ethically and morally - I think the two words mean the same thing, but both in case someone thinks they mean different things. A distinction that while the "lower" levels might be described as transactional, this top layer is not. — tim wood

It seems to me you’re splitting off a supposed
‘top layer’ of e and morality from everyday means-ends motivation , when in fact this top layer is embedded within and informs every motivated action we take, no matter how trivial. Every action we take in order to accomplish some aim understands that aim in relation to larger aims , and those larger aims are done for the sake of a self whose overall purposes are bound up with a core sense of one’s relation to others, how we see ourselves as mattering or others and how they matter to us, our sense of belonging and esteem. All of these features are bound together at the top, or superordinate level of our identity, and infuse the meaning and direction of all our actions.

A distinction that while the "lower" levels might be described as transactional, this top layer is not. — tim wood

I'm open to adding as many layers as Maslow, or even subdividing them into more layers. But your meaning of 'transactional' eludes me. It seems to me the base layer - once an organism is no longer dependent on its parents - consists largely of transactions with the environment, while the upper ones require transactions with other conscious organisms.

Not all these transaction are necessarily direct one-to-one bargains. Your anonymous charitable giving may not bring you face to face with its beneficiary. It makes you feel good (improving your life) and helps someone else also feel good (improving the community's life). But first, you had to acquire something to give, presumably by working for a third party, and you had to do the giving through a charity (unless you threw it through the recipient's window at night, like St Nicholas), thereby interacting with a fourth party, who then interacted with the recipient, who then used the money - if it was money you donated - to interact with some fifth party.
Lots of transactions going on!

n order to choose any goals or aims, one must be vital enough to choose. One must perform the basic actions entailed in survival; these are the minimum requirement — Vera Mont

You’re separating ‘raw’ vitality from the normative patterns of interaction that comprise what a living system actually does and is. I think this is an artificial separation , and makes living self-organization a secondary to a physicalistic notion of life.

That sounds to me like a hyperbolic description of a simple matter: be born, live, eat, eliminate, rest, want things, procreate (or not) die. There is no meaning to being what it is over time: it already is and has no choice about what it is — Vera Mont

It does have a choice every moment. That’s what it means to be a normative system with aims and purposes. The constraints and affordance of an environment for oganisms and psychological systems are defined in relation to the specifically directed patterns of their functioning. When a choice is made between a ‘good’ and ‘bad’ option , it is not just the living system passively responding to what impinges on it from the world, or programmed into it, but the organism modifying its built niche according to aims which themselves are subtly refined in context of interaction with an outside. Conditioning is bi-directional, from world to living system and from living system to world.

The meaning of a living system isnt pre-given like a manufactured tool, it is continually re-established in subtly new ways through actual interaction with a world.

Purpose and value.

Think of it vice versa.

Why is value important? Because it serves our purposes.

Why is purpose important? Because it's commands our values.

If you put it that way, that is the way it's put. (But it's still just living.)

It's not the gambit or the vanilla, it's the always. — tim wood

Right. That is why I asked:

Why should what I always do and what you always do be related in any way other than this being what we always do? — Fooloso4

and:

Would you ask if what I sometimes do is related to what you sometimes do? — Fooloso4

When you say:

The structure of the inquiry being, is-it, what-is-it, what-kind-of-a-thing-is-it, genus/species, quiddities; and the tools being the simple "why" and "what." — tim wood

and follow this with the example of 'always' then 'always' is being treated as a kind of thing with its own "whatness". It seems to me that you are reifying 'always' as if it plays a determinate role in what is being done.

But what is at issue here is 'purpose'. Your initial question:

The questions here are, then, what is purpose (in itself), where does it come from, what is its ground? Or, what exactly gives it all meaning, makes it all worthwhile? — tim wood

"Purpose in itself" treats it as if it is some thing that exists on its own apart from those things that have purposes.

Given, to be sure. But isn't there some aspect of yourself not merely given, but chosen and self-legislated? — tim wood

Oh yes, but I think all those other "aspects of yourself" are derivatives from what you asked about in the OP: "purpose (in itself)" – and not just mere "instrumental" (i.e. utilitarian/aspirational) purposes.

I recognize I have a standing purpose of never being in a position of not having clean clothes. Call it rule. — tim wood

Thomas Schelling gives the example of two drivers playing chicken, and one of them pulls his steering wheel off and holds it up so the other driver can see it.

You seem to be talking about something near here, something that in some ways looks like a choice, but a choice that's no longer in play, one you can't go back on. (Maybe in some cases that's only relative, or temporary.) Such a commitment, that's beyond our reach to go back on it, is what you're reaching for with "purpose". Is that close?

If that's the right analysis, that might explain why people are inclined to say that purpose comes from outside (from God, Nature, Aristotle, Darwin, whatever): either way you experience it as not up to you.

But it does raise a question: what is this capacity to remove the steering wheel? How is this kind of commitment different from other choices we make and why do we do it? To what end?

How is this kind of commitment different from other choices we make and why do we do it? — Srap Tasmaner

I think maybe, to prove our resolution - to the authority (human or divine), to our fellow acolytes, and to ourselves. An absolute commitment is unconditional; if you want to be sure and to demonstrate that you won't renege, you have to make sure that you can't renege. Once the steering wheel is off, all further decisions are out of you hands; no longer your responsibility.

There's social contact stuff that comes readily to mind. Schelling's credible deterrent scenario is a surprise application of that. -- That was meant more as a "structural" analogy, because while the social value of predictability on your part is obvious, what good is it to you?

It's the sort of temporary move you make all the time, just to be able to think: you hold some variables as fixed, just for the moment, so you can see what the others do. But why fix them forever? And how?

One of the talking heads in the Heidegger film, Being in the World, attributes to Kierkegaard the idea that we can't be the source of all the meaning in the world, because if we were we could also take it all away.

I think we're kind of in that territory. It's easy enough to see why you'd want someone else to believe you'll hold up your end, keep your promises, honor your contacts, and all that, but how do you convince yourself and why would you?

It looks like it has to be a slightly different mechanism, and in fact that's the point of Schelling's scenario: removing the wheel is a move which *changes* the game. The game is built on each side swearing they won't turn but the other side knowing they still might anyway, even if they honestly believe they won't.

For an individual, how do you make a commitment to yourself you can't back out of?

(I'm passing over a lot of interesting stuff.)

I'll try one more time: is God constrained in any way? Is He real? My point being that in belief in an idea, you can have what you want. But not in any reality. — tim wood

God has to be real, because that is stipulated in the conception of "God", as an essential aspect of "God". If God was not real, then the conception would be contradictory, and there would be no God to talk about, just self-contradictory nonsense. So, if we are talking about God here, we are by definition talking about something real. You can dismiss talk about God as self-contradictory nonsense if you like, but please don't ask me if God is real, because it just indicates that you are totally ignorant.

As for your other question, I have no knowledge as to whether God is constrained or not. Some say that God is not constrained in any way, but I think that's just conjecture.

Take a look at this problem tim. I said to you that the purpose of an animal's heart is to circulate blood, and you said that's not the sense of "purpose" I am talking about. Now you clarify the sense of "purpose you are talking about, with the following.

On a good day, if I do something, it is for a reason. If my effort is successful, it might be said I had achieved my purpose in doing it. In this sense purpose like a work order or chore or task, a thing to be done. — tim wood

How is this a different sense of "purpose" from when I said the purpose of the heart is to circulate blood? To circulate blood is "a thing to be done", by the heart, it is "the reason" for the heart. If the heart's effort is successful, it achieves its purpose. It's the very same sense of "purpose".

I didn't understand most of that, especially the part about a game.

For an individual, how do you make a commitment to yourself you can't back out of? — Srap Tasmaner

Jumping off a tall building would do it.
For lesser commitments, you don't; there is always the possibility of failing, chickening out or changing your mind.

Jumping off a tall building would do it. — Vera Mont

Yes, exactly. The idea is to constrain your own agency, even to the point of extinguishing it, if necessary.

It's a point of interest that we often find this sort of irrevocable commitment praiseworthy. I suppose the idea is that it takes a supreme act of agency to so constrain your future agency -- and then whatever praise later acts would normally get, if undertaken freely, is instead heaped upon the original act.

When it's all praiseworthy, anyway. But it's up to us whether to call such stubbornness "principle" or "prejudice". (From the Latin, judging ahead of time.) And that determines how we take this:

For lesser commitments, you don't; there is always the possibility of failing, chickening out or changing your mind. — Vera Mont

We certainly talk that way when we're in the mood to judge the behavior of others, but we know perfectly well it's not that simple. You don't really make choices about your blind spots, for instance. Exactly how to hold people accountable for prejudices they grew up with, and may only dimly be aware of, is rather hotly debated these days. Less so, though analagous, whether anyone should get credit for having been raised to have sterling or at least unobjectionable character.

We know more too. We know that it can be terribly difficult actually to put into effect a choice we've made. We may firmly believe that some course of action would be "the right thing to do" and still not do it. Why? Who knows.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

Anyhow, it's a known fact. So what appears to be principle or prejudice may be neither, but merely an inability to act otherwise, whether accompanied by an ability to think or choose otherwise or not.

And all of this suggests, I think, that choice is just the wrong model here, or less helpful than it might seem; if there is a way of making a choice you can't unchoose, it's whatever enables that, that's really doing the work. Hence people reach for lots of things that aren't up to you: God, human nature, your individual nature, whatever.

Bonus: some dialogue from an episode of Firefly I'm so fond of I may have posted it on here before.

God has to be real, — Metaphysician Undercover

Thank you.
A constrained God is not one I'm accustomed to hearing about. The usual claim is omnipotence - God can do anything and everything, which if the author and creator of the universe we live in, he would pretty much have to be. But to be in reality is to have predicates, meaning that he is what he is and is not what he isn't. Which means there are things he cannot do or be, contradicting the claim. Or if infinite, then all things all the time, including what he isn't. So the claim of omnipotence, if he's real, leads to nonsense. And if constrained, then not God. But as an idea he is not, so far as I know, subject to those constraints.

As to any necessity for his reality - yours sounding like Anselm's - that is only a "proof" for those who already take that real existence as axiomatic. Reality is the realm of nature, and recall we put that to the question.

As to hearts, I have to own up to my ideas about "purpose" being pretty clearly not as clear as I thought they were, or would have liked them to be. However, I think I can distinguish between purpose and function. And so I would say that a heart has a function, and if you want to overlap the words in meaning so that in this case purpose means function, then it's too late for me to object. But so far as they differ in meaning, I do not think a heart (itself) has a purpose.

Such a commitment, that's beyond our reach to go back on it, is what you're reaching for with "purpose". Is that close? — Srap Tasmaner

Once choice is gone, then not really a commitment any more, it seems to me, but instead a having been committed. I confess my original OP thoughts about "purpose" have been thoroughly poked with forks. I thought I had it nailed down, but very apparently not. I see purpose (now) as a settled state of mind beyond ordinary questioning about something significant, that serves to inform action or other beliefs, though flexible, if need be. I may have a rule about clean clothes, but if on a day lacking them, I won't go naked.

If that's the right analysis, that might explain why people are inclined to say that purpose comes from outside (from God, Nature, Aristotle, Darwin, whatever): either way you experience it as not up to you. — Srap Tasmaner

My own view is that the "outside" is often a convenient fiction, even excuse; that it comes from within and that the active agent is simply the individual himself.

But it does raise a question: what is this capacity to remove the steering wheel? How is this kind of commitment different from other choices we make and why do we do it? To what end? — Srap Tasmaner

In as much as removing the steering doesn't make sense (to me), there can be only speculation. And that as to what might make sense, given the lack of it. Edit: added: That is, removing the steering wheel not only means the car is no longer under control, but that it may be instantly out of control. One or other might make sense, but it's hard to see how they both together do.